The other day it was reported that Sprint’s parent company, Softbank, would be replacing some of its equipment that was provided/built by Huawei. It seems that they are not alone because in a report from Reuters, it looks like T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom could also be considering a similar move.
Huawei is definitely not having a particularly good year as the US has been trying to rid itself of communications technology built by the company. They have also been trying to convince their allies across the border and around the world to drop Huawei’s tech. It was recently reported that Japan could also stop using Huawei and ZTE’s technology, along with Australia and New Zealand.
However it seems that the decision by Softbank and Deutsche Telekom might be for more than just security reasons. It is said that they believe that if they were to comply with the US government’s requests that it could help the Sprint and T-Mobile merger to go through. Both companies are currently in the process of trying to clear the various regulatory hurdles, and it seems that dropping Huawei as their equipment manufacturer and supplier could help ease that process along.
The report claims that nothing could be finalized yet so there is a chance that the deal could still fall through. In the meantime it has been reported that removing Huawei’s equipment and buying new ones could prove to be an expensive endeavor. Over in Canada it has been estimated it could cost as much as $1 billion to swap out Huawei’s tech for another company’s.